global cities with over 10 million people

By 2030 China is expected to attain yet another megacity, marking a clear departure from its agrarian past. China has been undergoing rapid urbanization since the restructuring of their economy in the latter portion of the twentieth century. The most substantial changes in urban populations have been in China and sub-Saharan Africa. Japan, Brazil, and the United States are the next best represented with two megacities apiece, and 5 on our list. China and India collectively account for 7 of the 20 cities on our list. China is home to six megacities, and India has five.

Of megacities, a substantial majority are in the Global South.

There are 512 cities with at least 1 million people, but only 31 megacities. Today, 23 percent of the population lives in cities exceeding one million in population, and 7 percent of the population specifically lives in megacities of more than ten million. That number is expected to reach 60 percent by 2030. The Urban WorldĪccording to the most recent figures from the United Nations, over 50 percent of the world's population lives in an urban environment. The city with the widest disparity between these figures is Jakarta, with about 10,000,000 in the city proper and 30,000,000 in the agglomeration. Most of these numbers are urban agglomerations, but some are not, either due to tradition or due to particular characteristics about that city. Per World Urbanization Prospects, there are three basic ways to determine a city: there's the city proper, which is just the legal bounds of the city itself there's the urban agglomeration, which includes all connected urban area or densely settled areas around the city and then there's the metropolitan area, which includes the range of suburbs and communities wherein much of the population regularly commutes into the city.

While people will generally agree that a city is a close area with a lot of buildings and people, defining what counts as a city for demographic purposes can be tricky. Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2016).

Global cities with over 10 million people